Bootlog

Microsoft launched recently an ad for Windows Live Photo Gallery with Yosemite Bear. His recording of a double rainbow became quite popular reaching over 12mln views since January. The recording itself bears tremendous amount of emotions, which is quite nicely put  in one of the video’s comment:

His inner peace is what every being on earth strives for. Joy obtained simply by viewing a natural phenomenon that isn’t man-made. Learn to appreciate the little things in life and see with unabashed bliss… we should all be so lucky to be so happy… it’d be a better world.

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It would be, indeed. But is quite different.

At first the process of commercialization of one’s emotions struck me and the fact that those emotions were a hmmm… remake actually. Trivial. Leave it then.  I even thought it is impossible to be released so quickly, then I’d realized that the date is in U.S format, so it wasn’t August, it was published on the 8th of January. That could have been be a Lion wining responsiveness. Anyway it is not. But what it is, apart from the obvious emotion-trade, is also, how ubiquitous it became in our language.  A very deep emotional experience of the Yosemite Bear was true, honest and natural. Advertisement as usual has turned it into a bit naff piece that does not make much sense and all it wants is to be funny. It is always funny for the creators since they have no distance to the piece and they’ve done it so they have all the rights to wank. And that reveals something that struck me the most. Not in this blog post itself tho but this was a good trigger. This is the line:

We hooked up with Bear to learn more about him & show him how to capture a full on double rainbow with Windows Live Photo Gallery using our panorama stitch feature. It’s so intense!

There are many lines like that and quite often they are even more perverse in making things sound better then just: “We hired him to remake the video our way because his video was popular and we wanna piggy-back it.”  Well that is probably what was on a mind of a very skilled AD or CD that came up with it(stumbled upon to be precise) Anyway it is the way brands support creative decisions (well they might have done it long before but I wasn’t there, so maybe I should be corrected).  Well… not only brands actually(I am here now and I can see/hear them voices). It is quite common language among all adland citizens. Be it a blog post or internal chat, it is always a very peculiar way of boasting; it is all about being friendly, working together, enjoying, having fun and hanging out. Nothing wrong with it, hey? Of course nothing at all, all are triggers of positive emotions and associations. Sharing fun and positive vibe is the best and obvious way of making the whole world happier and better. One cannot argue with that, one cannot criticize positive emotions or intentions. We take for granted implications of saying “How exciting it is, I love it.” while crying inside otherwise and thinking that I am being polite. Hold on! Since when lying is a among good manners? Honest, true conversation is today as difficult as bumping into gentleman with a hat in London.

Video commentator, quoted above, mentions “phenomenon that isn’t man-made” that is the source of the awe. Those phenomenons are impressive, natural and unintentional, and yes we all know it. Same can be with man-made phenomenons. But closer to those natural ones are gestures and deeds(e.g. Schindler’s list, children adoption, charity work etc). Much further are ads. But we creatives, and them suits, wish they deserve more appreciation then any naturally occurring ‘Wow!’. Our expectations are so high that we’ve even created a whole new way of communication to impose it onto the rest of the world. We boast about every little shitty thing we do. Tweet about the cubic size of a fart someone had had while working his ass off on a project while eating 3rd pencil watching youtube silliest video contest, blog about our name being mentioned in a Metro on a 345 page in a bottom-left corner.

I can live with this meaningless downpour of nonsense in public space, I can choose not to read/hear/see it, but it is frustrating when you talk with your work mates and they say:

It was amazing, we did go to the park and fed squirrels and then you know what! We took pictures of them! Using my old Leica I bought for £500 and spend another £500 on repairs. And now it almost shoots good pictures. Anyway it was so fun. We hooked up with that guy that sits all day on a park bench and feeds pigeons. He’s got 12 years experience you know, he fed pigeons for Trafalagar and Picadilly. He knows everything about feeding pigeons. So we’ve asked him to help us. He helped us to feed squirrels for just £400 a day not knowing even how does the squirrel look like. Client loved it. We’ve even brought squirrels to the presentation. It was so creative. It was so fresh. All the squirrels died tho.

It may be pretty pretentious made up monologue, but it does reflect something once an ‘experienced’ copywriter told me that “advertisement is all about lies”. It hurts. And it is true. Lying to consumers(I think it is dying off now) or lying to each other(which I think grows at the moment) are 2 different communication strategies. The first one happens and we all got used to it to the point that we  double check products, ask friends, read and write reviews and rely on word of mouth. The second one seems to be just muddying the water but I think it is may be more then that. TV ad is not any more a good execution, “behind the scenes” brought to us in last couple of decades or the “making of” found the way out from Hollywood to Adland. Seriously, who on earth gives a damn about how an ad has been done? I ran, some time ago, an online campaign which was nothing more then repository of the campaign’s documentation: tv ads, behind the scenes pics, making of videos and pics etc. Nothing useful to anybody, at all. No user experience. No user at all! Number of visitors: embarrassing. Boasting? Well. This is a whole new world. Illusion of being busy, showing off how great fun it was to work on any given shit project and shouting everywhere that feeding squirrels is greater then travel to the moon, are quite often signals that there’s something wrong with the content. Some sort of smoke-barrier made out of lies. Honestly, over half of the brands and/or agencies websites are filled with the same set of prefabricated content. We are on a straight road to bullshit like that: ” Last summer was very exciting. We have shared 1M of our products with our supporters and they were kind enough to donate £100 for each product we shared.” Instead of: “Last summer we’ve sold 1M units for £100 each”. Of course tone of voice is important but that seems to hide the content(or lack of it). For me it matters what you are saying more then how you do it. Words do have meanings for a good reason and changing them is useful to say something new, not the same old salesman crap.

Although being an advocate of UCD and transparency I can see how it all fits together. Balance is very important for both sides and their existence. If the brand is transparent, how do we know it? By comparison, as a matter of fact. Language used in communication can tell the differences before we make any decisions on the product. That’s obvious, right? So we love to compare. Oh yeah we even make money on comparing stuff. On the other side, living through communism in 80’s, it is still a bit shocking experience for me to even think about complexity of all the goods available. Anyway meerkats and friends are best source of information on how not to get screwed. There are of course situations when you are screwed before you make a choice. Apple is a perfect example of a brand that can talk bullshit more often then the others since thy are the only choice for millions. This is perhaps why trust is such a valuable asset. But we do not trust each other in the adland either, and there are no friends to ask who should be trusted because they may not be your friends. We lie and lie constantly to show off how great we are how much time we haven’t wasted. If our works and results are shit we cover them in boasting sophistry with wanky acoustic guitar howling. By doing that we assure our egos that we can use the same strategy when we speak to consumers on behalf of our clients. And then they go somewhere else. First consumers, but clients won’t tell you that.

Advertisement is still legalized crime. Maybe it’s about time to stop stealing and start sharing?